Beneath a Dakota Cross Page 6

  Grass stood up beside him, his thumbs laced in his vest pockets. “For a man who thought his future was under that there Dakota cross, you’re surely takin’ all this leavin’ peaceful.”

  “I didn’t say it was under a Dakota cross, just a cross.” Brazos glanced down near Edwards’s boots and definitely saw the name Jamie Sue scratched in the dirt. “Anyway, even the children of Israel went into exile in Egypt before they returned to the promised land,” he muttered.

  Big River Frank stood up by the other two, a good six inches shorter than Brazos. “Maybe the Lord’s exiled you from Texas. You ever think maybe he’s going to call you back there?”

  Brazos pointed down at the flames. “The Hebrew children were in Egypt for four hundred years.”

  “I know better than to get you in a Bible quotin’ contest,” Big River conceded as he glanced around camp. “I suppose we’ve done all we can do.”

  Edwards rested his right hand on the walnut grip of the Colt revolver that hung from a wire hook on his belt. “There’s one more thing I wished we could have finished. I wish we could have caught up with Kabyo and them that shot Hook.”

  Brazos gazed to the west. “We chased them down out of the hills and straight for the Big Horns. The Sioux and the Cheyenne will have to take care of them out there. That’s too dangerous land for any of us.”

  Big River Frank spat a wad of tobacco clear over the top of the fire. “You know the thing I can’t figure? Kabyo and them risk their lives comin’ all the way to the hills ’cause they is convinced Hook’s got a treasure map. Now, it don’t seem likely that they just up and rode off because we threw a little lead at them.”

  “If you had a mind to rob trains and stagecoaches, how much would you want to tramp up and down these mountains lookin’ for a gold claim no one’s ever seen. Truth is, it just might not be worth the effort.”

  “Strange thing is, I’ve never seen this man Kabyo,” Big River added. “I wouldn’t know him if he rode up.”

  “And none of us knows him,” Grass Edwards concurred.

  “Yapper Jim does,” Brazos reminded them.

  Big River Frank pointed his calloused, bronzed hand to the two saddled horses. “I suppose we ought to ride south.”

  Brazos dumped his coffee grounds onto the dirt, then scattered them with the toe of his worn, brown boot. “I’ll see you down to French Creek before you pull out. If not, I’ll meet you at the crossing.”

  Big River Frank looked over at the one remaining tent. “I still think we ought to stay and help you bury Hook. That’s what family’s for.”

  Brazos stared into Big River’s trusting brown eyes. He means it, Lord. Up here in the hills, we’re the only family any one of us has. Brazos cleared his throat. “We’ve got the grave dug. Only one of us needs to hang back, and that’s me ’cause I promised I’d pray over his grave. That’s the kind of promise a man has to keep.”

  Edwards used his boot to erase the words in the dirt. “Then why on earth are we draggin’ around like this is a final good-bye? Come on, Big River,” he slapped the shorter man on the back. “Let’s go make sure them miners hear from Texas Camp on upper Lightnin’ Creek.”

  “Cover his grave so the wolves won’t get in,” Big River Frank cautioned, reaching out to shake Brazos’s hand.

  “I’ll bring the rest of our gear down on Hook’s buckskin.” Fortune walked the other two to their mounts. “Listen, boys, I have one favor to ask of you.” Brazos reached in his pocket and pulled out two envelopes. He handed one to each man.

  “What is this, your last will and testament?” Edwards protested, staring at the address on the envelope.

  “Nope. Just one letter to Todd and another to Robert.”

  “This don’t sound like you plan on seeing us tomorrow,” Big River said.

  Brazos pulled a third letter out of his pocket. “Sure I do. I’ve got one to send myself. But crazy things happen. We could get split up somewhere along the trail. I haven’t got a letter out to the children in over a month. I just wanted to let them know I’m doin’ fine. I need to send three, just to make sure one gets through.”

  “Then we can all mail them at the same time when we get to Cheyenne City,” Big River Frank proposed.

  Grass Edwards swung into the saddle, then pointed back to a flat, sandstone rock. “Hand me up that Monarda fistulosa I found this morning.”

  Brazos snatched up the large, lavender-flowered, green-stemmed plant. “Now, tell me again what you’re goin’ to do with this Horsemint.”

  “Boil it up,” Edwards replied. “The fumes cure the vapors. Yes, sir, just a whiff or two of this and the chest clears right up.”

  Big River Frank mounted his black horse, leaned across the saddle horn, and spat a wad of tobacco into the dirt. “How do you know it works?”

  Grass folded the plant and tucked it into his saddlebag. “You ever seen an Indian with a cold?”

  Big River punched his heels into the flank of his horse and started down the trail. “I ain’t never got close enough to see one with freckles, either, but that don’t mean they don’t have them.”

  Brazos watched as the two men trotted down the creek, arguing the merits of herbal medication. He stared at the backsides of their horses until both men dropped over the rise and disappeared from sight. He snatched up his Sharps carbine and studied the three-hundred-foot claim from border to border. His eyes locked on to every Ponderosa tree, every sandstone rock, every ripple in the creekbed, every blade of cordgrass, every low-growing gray sage.

  The animals and the snow can knock down the markers. We’ve got to have this place memorized. It’s going to get hectic if they open this land up. Not only will the miners move back, but so will the saloon keepers, the gamblers, the bankers and merchants, and families. Won’t it be somethin’, Lord, when this country is filled with families?

  Brazos reached into his vest pocket and pulled out gold wire-framed spectacles, perched them on his nose, and wrapped the earpieces behind each ear. Then he tugged out the letter he had shown to Big River and Grass. He squatted down next to the barely glowing fire and scanned the India ink scrawled note.

  August 13, 1875—Dakota Territory

  Dearest Dacee June,

  I am missing you something terrible. Thoughts of your smile and the twinkle in your blue eyes keep me warm most every night. I imagine you, your cousins, and Aunt Barbara will be putting up preserves about now. I know you are a big help to her, and I’m grateful you can stay with her and Uncle Milton.

  Well, your daddy hasn’t exactly found that ranch under the cross … yet. But we just might have a bonanza in gold. The prospect looks good.

  It’s an amazin’ land up here, darlin’. There are white rock mountains, and millions of trees pointin’ straight up to heaven. The creeks are tiny, but clean … and the water is so sweet they could bottle it and sell it at the state fair.

  The hills have been rainy this month, but one smile from my Dacee June and I’m sure the clouds would run away. The summer storms have put me behind schedule a little. You’ll need to go ahead and start school in Texas in the fall. I’ll make ever’ effort to be there by your birthday.

  Yes, there are still buffalo up here. I can’t wait to show them to you. But, most of all, I can’t wait to hug my little girl again.

  Promise me you won’t get married until after I come home!

  With sincere affection always,

  Daddy

  Brazos tucked the letter back into his pocket, took a deep breath of warm air, wiped a single tear out of the corner of each eye, then sauntered over to the lonely looking tent. He stooped his six-foot frame down to enter the four-foot tent flap. Lying motionless under three wool blankets was Hook Reed.

  Eyes closed, sunken.

  Mouth open, sagging to the right.

  Forehead flushed, sweating.

  “Well, I sent the boys on down to French Creek to attend that miners’ meetin’, Hook. You and me will catch up with them tomorrow o
r the next day, whenever you are up to it. The air tastes summer fresh, if you know what I mean. I reckon our rainy days are over for a while. You’ll be plumb excited to get out on the trail.”

  Reed didn’t respond.

  He hadn’t responded for over ten days.

  Brazos reached under the top blanket and held onto Reed’s ice cold wrist. The faint pulse continued its erratic rhythm.

  He just keeps hanging on, Lord. It seems to me it would be in his best interest to get well or pass on. But I guess it’s not in your best interest. Comfort his soul, Lord. I know his body can’t hold out much longer.

  Brazos took a rag off the empty powder crate that served as a bed table, dipped it in a coffee cup of clean water, then wiped Reed’s forehead.

  “Hook, it’s a mighty beautiful day out there today. In fact, the weather’s been pretty since the day you were shot. If your hands and feet weren’t so cold, I’d open the flap and let you taste that summer breeze.”

  He reached over and patted Reed on his good shoulder. “Now, you go on and take a nap. I’ll cook us some supper after a while. If you’re up to it, I’ll let you cook breakfast. Who knows, by mornin’ you just might feel like a new man!”

  Brazos crawled out of the tent. By morning, maybe he’ll be walkin’ the streets of glory. He carried his Sharps carbine with him as he hiked across the deserted camp toward the whitewood trees where the two horses were picketed. He plopped down on a stump, studied the solitary tent in the distance, then glanced up at the blue Dakota sky.

  It’s quiet here, Sarah Ruth. If there were no hostiles and no miners, this would be a peaceful, quiet land. Just the kind you’d like. I reckon the same could be said for any place on earth.

  But someplace … is our place.

  A place for me, Dacee June … maybe Todd, Robert … and someday, Lord willin’, even Samuel. Lord, keep the prodigal safe today. Bring him to his senses.

  We can’t stay in Texas.

  Mr. Houston was right. The war brought ruin to Texas. But they chased him out of the Governor’s mansion … and now they chased me out, too. Lord, forgive them.

  Now, Sarah Ruth, I promised you on your deathbed that I’d raise our boys to honorable manhood and Dacee June to respectable womanhood, and I aim to do it. We got one that is more trouble than the others, but I won’t give up on him.

  He stretched out on the ground and closed his eyes. He couldn’t remember when he’d had his last full night of sleep.

  And he knew that he would not sleep on this day, either.

  Brazos had spent the war working out of Brownsville, Texas, making sure supplies from Europe could break the Union blockade and reach families up and down the Rio Grande. He, Big River Frank, and six others got the assignment of leading the Union ships in decoy chases, while the supply boats slipped in behind them. Over the course of four years, he watched seven boats and several friends sink in the surf of the Gulf of Mexico. In one incident, when their ship capsized, he spent twenty-eight hours floating atop two crates of dynamite that miraculously refused to sink.

  It was the only time in his life that he had felt more lonely than he did at this moment. It had been four days since he said good-bye to Big River Frank and Grass Edwards.

  He lay across the top of his bedroll, which he had spread out in the trees near the horses. Fifty feet up the hill a few coals glowed in the campfire. The unseen smoke wafted in his nostrils. Beyond the fire, the bright summer stars dimly reflected off the canvas tent that contained an unconscious Hook Reed.

  Brazos lay on his back, his head propped on the Texas saddle. The Sharps carbine lay alongside, his right hand on the smooth, cold receiver. He tried to close his eyes, but they kept flipping open like a schoolyard gate during recess.

  General Crook has moved the miners by now … they’re probably at Cheyenne Crossing already. If I rode hard all night through Red Canyon, I might catch them before they reached Fort Laramie. Probably, I’d just catch some Sioux arrows or bullets.

  But I can’t up and leave Hook to die, and I surely am not goin’ to speed it up. If I hadn’t doctored that wound of Hook’s, spoonfed him, wrapped him up when he’s cold, wiped him down when he’s feverish, he would have died two weeks ago. So I’ve kept him alive for two more weeks.

  For what?

  Two more weeks of unconsciousness? Two more weeks of suffering?

  Lord, sometimes doin’ good don’t make sense. If I cooled him off right now, then pulled his covers off and let him sleep outside, he’d catch a chill in the night and be dead by mornin’.

  If he was dead, I could head down to the Cheyenne River. And Hook, he could waltz through the pearly gates.

  But I can’t do that.

  You know I can’t do that.

  So, here we are … me nightguardin’ camp and keepin’ him alive, and both of us waitin’ for him to die.

  What if the Sioux come stormin’ through here?

  That’s why I need to stay awake all night and keep watch.

  He fingered the carbine at his side.

  It’s a strange feeling, Lord, to know I could fire this .50 Sharps as a warning shot, and absolutely no one would hear it.

  No one but the unconscious Hook Reed.

  And you.

  But you know I’m going to stay.

  I’ll stay until Hook’s dead. Or I am. Or both of us.

  But I won’t sleep.

  I can’t.

  Coco’s cautious snort woke Brazos. The sun had broken over the eastern pine-covered hills, and the well-used canvas tent took on new brightness in the light of early dawn. It was the first morning in three months that Brazos hadn’t been up and around before the sun rose.

  Without raising his head off the saddle he slowly pulled the Sharps carbine up across his chest and fingered the trigger. The heavy dual clicks of the hammer being pulled back echoed above the gurgle of Lightning Creek behind him.

  Slowly, he scanned the region to the north of camp, towards the whitewood grove that had been a hiding place for Doc Kabyo two weeks before. Something made Coco whinny and his ears stand up. High above the limestone outcrop on the ridge to the west, a brown hawk coasted in a morning drift.

  There was no other movement.

  Until the tent flap flew open.

  “Hook?” Fortune’s response to seeing Hook Reed crawl out of the tent on his hands and knees was more of a croak than a statement. Having kept night watch fully dressed, Brazos leaped to his feet, still clutching his carbine, and tried to straighten out his legs and back.

  Barefoot, wearing only dirty long underwear and a blanket still draped on his shoulders, Reed struggled to straighten up, barely able to keep his balance.

  “Hook! You shouldn’t be up. What are you doing?” Brazos called as he shuffled towards the campfire.

  When Reed turned to face Brazos, he also was facing the bright morning sun, and the sight made Fortune stop and stare.

  Hook’s face isn’t hollow … his eyes are bright and alert … he looks thirty … he is thirty! Lord, you’ve healed him!

  “I think I’ll go on home, Brazos.” The voice was so strong and clear that it made the hair on the back of Fortune’s neck stand up.

  “Sure, Hook, when you feel good enough we’ll …”

  “Well,” Reed shouted, staring off at the sunlight behind Brazos, “ain’t that a wonderful surprise!”

  With his carbine at his shoulder Brazos spun around to view the object of Hook’s gaze. But he saw nothing but the morning sun, the stream, and two horses still picketed in the tree. What’s a wonderful surprise?

  The sound was like a 120-pound sack of barley being tossed out of the hayloft onto the barn floor—dead weight hitting dirt.

  When Brazos spun back towards the tent, Hook Reed lay crumpled on the ground next to the slightly smoldering campfire.

  Brazos had no urge to run over to Hook.

  He didn’t call out.

  He knew.

  Like the aroma of sweet perfume from a
pretty lady, deep peace seemed to waft across the camp.

  Well, Lord … I reckon you did heal him, didn’t you?

  Brazos walked over and knelt down beside the body.

  Again the face was sunken.

  Eyes wide open, shallow, lifeless.

  And there was no pulse on the ice-cold wrist.

  Brazos stared at the unshaven face.

  Well, Hooker Davis Reed … you found your gold now. The streets are paved with it. I did what I could, Hook … sorry I couldn’t do more … and forgive me if I did too much.

  By the time the sun was straight above Lightning Creek, Brazos packed camp on the back of the buckskin stallion and carefully covered Hook Reed’s grave with river rock and dirt.

  He climbed up on Coco and stared down at the gravesite that blended in completely with the trail down to French Creek.

  Hook, I wish I could have buried you beneath that Dakota cross of yours, wherever it is. There’s no marker here, because I don’t want no one disturbing your grave. Neither the four-legged nor the two-legged wolves can get to you now.

  I read over you from the Bible and said prayers like I promised. And I committed you into the hands of God Almighty. We didn’t catch up with Doc Kabyo yet … but I will someday. The Lord likes justice, and so do I.

  Brazos tipped his hat. “Good-bye, pardner. We’ll be back in the spring.”

  Fortune had ridden down the gulch past Sidwell’s cabin to French Creek and over to Gordon’s Stockade several dozen times in the past three months. But this time the trip was completely different. Always before, camps lined up one after another on each of the three-hundred-foot claims. There had been men in the stream or huddled under an awning in the rain. Scattered about were always gold pans, sluice boxes, rockers, and Long Toms. There were always horses and mules hobbled in the tiny meadows, the noise of hard work in the air.

  He never rode fifty yards without smelling a campfire, meat frying, coffee boiling, bread baking. Tents and lean-tos had littered the flat, west side of the stream. There had always been a “howdy,” a “mornin’ Brazos,” a “pick me up some flour at the stockade,” or some similar request.